Title: The most brutal and inhumane judicial punishments still used today Content: Page 1 : Introduction Page

1 : Public Stoning Page 1 : Hanging Page 2 : The Electric Chair Page 3 : Amputation Page 3 : Beheading Page 4 : Personal findings and Conclusions Page 5: Bibliography Attending: Student: Group:

The most brutal and inhumane judicial punishments still used today
Many nations and cultures have made official laws to protect their citizens from crime. Over the years, these laws have been in force, in order to keep their society from becoming anarchy. Different forms of punishments have been used to keep away would-be criminals. However, some citizens still tend to break the ruls. These days, all countries have a justice system and a prison for locking up their threats to society, but many countries can sentence someone to death or to other inhuman treatments for an extreme form of punishment. In the following pages I will present some of the most inhumane and cruel punishments still used today.

Public Stoning
Stoning is legislated in the Islamic penal code in Iran. Stoning is the most inhumane and horrifying form of execution, which can only be compared with witch burning in the middle ages. According to Islamic teachings, the punishment for adultery is death by stoning. In recent history, stoning has been associated with Islamist societies and according to the Hadith (sayings and actions of the prophet Mohammad), he himself ordered the stoning of many people in his own time. In practice, hundreds of women and men have been stoned to death, since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Women are buried up to their necks before a stoning. If convicted of adultery, Iranian law requires the stones not be too big or too small so that the probable death is not merciful or prolonged. If a woman miraculously survives a stoning, she must then serve a jail sentence. For men, the stoning procedure is a bit different. Men are buried up to their waists before a stoning. If they confess and manage to escape, they are free. Although it is codified that a man will be pardoned if he manages to escape, the victim is re-captured by the authorities and killed in a number of cases. manage to escape, they are free Stoning is usually carried out in public and many families of the victims have been forced to watch the execution.

Hanging
The modern method of judicial hanging is called the long drop. This is the method that Iraq officials used to execute Saddam Hussein. In the long drop, those planning the execution calculate the drop distance required to break the subject's neck based on his or her weight, height and build. With the knot of the noose placed at the left side of the subject's neck, under the jaw, the jolt to the neck at the end of the drop is enough to break or dislocate a neck bone called the axis, which in turn should sever the spinal cord. This is the ideal situation in a long drop. When the neck breaks and severs the spine, blood pressure drops down to nothing in about a second, and the subject loses consciousness. Brain death then takes several minutes to occur, and complete death can take more than 15 or 20 minutes, but the person at the end of the rope most likely can't feel or experience any of it.

In a less-than-ideal long drop, if the distance is miscalculated or some other factor misses the mark, the subject will die of decapitation (if the drop is too long) or of strangulation (if the drop is too short or the noose knot isn't in the correct position). Strangulation can take several minutes and is a far more excruciating experience. When it comes to judicial hanging, the long drop is the most humane way to go. For the person being executed, the actual experience of the hanging lasts anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes -- or at least that's the general belief by forensic scientists. In the short drop, which can be a few inches to a few feet, the subject invariably dies of strangulation and/or the compression of the arteries in the neck. The same type of death occurs in suspension hanging, in which the subject is jerked into the air instead of being dropped. And in a standard-drop hanging, the subjects falls about 5 feet. Depending on the weight and build of the subject, this drop will either break the neck and spinal cord or cause death by strangulation, carotid-artery compression or Vagal reflex. In these older methods, unconsciousness still typically occurs in anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. Hanging is a legal method of judicial execution in 58 countries, according to Amnesty International. In 33 of those countries, it is the only method of execution. In the United States, judicial hanging is legal in both Washington state and Delaware, and three prisoners have been hanged since the death penalty was reinstituted in 1976. While capital punishment is still on the books in many countries around the world, death by hanging has in many cases been replaced by more sterile killing methods like lethal injection, which some believe to be a more humane form of execution. Many people might be surprised to learn that hanging, when carried out with modern techniques, can be one of the quickest and most painless ways to be executed.

The Electric Chair

The electric chair essentially replaced hanging and it was introduced in the U.S. in 1888. The electric chair was designed as a "more humane" method of execution, although it does not cause instant death. Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse were battling to dominate electrical utilities at the time, and Westinghouse's alternating current powered the first electric chair. In order to go to the chair, the prisoner must have their head freshly shaved a few minutes before the execution. They also have to have their legs shaved, so an electrode can be placed on their right leg, and all facial hair is shaved. They have a slit cut in the leg of their pants so the electrode can make contact with their bare skin. Once that is finished, they are led to the chair. Once in the room, a prison warden hands them a microphone so they can say their last words to an audience behind a glass wall, and the execution proceeds. A mask is put over their face so the audience doesn't have to see the expression on the condemned's face once the electricity starts flowing through their body, for some faces can be brutal, and sometimes the condemned's face burns. It sends an electrical charge through a person. This is achieved by attaching an electrode to the shaved head of the condemned and another electrode around the shaved right calf of the condemned. The current enters through the head to complete itself and thereby, uses the body of the condemned as a conductor. This causes brain death, heart failure and overall fatal organ damage. If conducted properly, the electric chair is a painless way to quickly kill the condemned. 1,500 to 2,300 volts are applied across the body to cause immediate brain death, for 8 seconds. Then 300 to 1,000 volts are applied across the body for 20 seconds. Then another 1,500 to 2,300 volts are applied for another eight seconds, and the current is turned off.
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A doctor checks the prisoner's heartbeat. If the prisoner is dead, which by now they should be, the electrical devices are removed from their body and taken to a hospital to be placed until burial in the prison. However, if the prisoner is NOT dead, the whole cycle is repeated. The electric chair is still a legal method of execution in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Death row inmates are given the choice of dying by lethal injection or the electric chair. Since 1993, at least five electric chair executions have gone seriously wrong with prisoners being slowly tortured to death with blue and orange flames shooting out of the helmet while he or she is still alive and in intense agony.

Amputation
Amputation has been applied in medicine for over a century. It has been applied for medical reasons to save lives, but that has not been the only application of amputation. In some cases amputation used to be and in some places still is a form of punishment . In communities such as the Arab community, amputation as a punishment method is not a new phenomenon. The Arabs tradition imposes amputation, as a punishment because they believe that the pain therewith an amputee undergoes will prevent him or her from committing the same mistake once more. Theft in some places results to a day, weeks, months or years of imprisonment, but not to the Arabs, to them theft deserves an amputation of the arm. In observation amputation as a punishment served and still is an effective punishment if at all there has to be a method to prevent further crime of the same kind. But human rights activists in the contrary have a different view of the matter. Human rightists have fought and still continue to fight to stop the practice of amputation as a correctional method. They argue that amputating is not the only solution. Amnesty International has a list of countries that practice amputation as capital punishment. Among their list are, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran . In Iraq punishment for different state violations include ear amputations, hand amputation, and leg amputation. The listed kinds of amputation have stirred anger in the eyes of human rights activists. And there have been calls to stop such punishment. Tear amputation was abandoned some years back as a consequent of these calls. Iraq has a rising level of amputees. The reason behind this could be because of the rising economic difficulties caused by sanctions imposed on it, which leaves the citizens with no solution but theft. Although there have been calls from human right groups and activists from around the world to stop amputation as a correctional method, this may not be easy to implement and there is not a wide hope that the countries practicing it will stop soon. This is so because most of these punishments are implemented because of religious or traditional decree. And we all know it's not easy to abandon anything under such a circumstance. Perhaps human rights will have to cry harder to archive their goal, or may be they will never archive it. Judicial amputation is still practiced in many other countries too including Yemen, Sudan, and Islamic regions of Nigeria. Under the Taliban, judicial amputations were common in Afghanistan.

Beheading
Beheading with a sword or axe goes back a very long way in history. This method was used in the 20th century but is now confined to Saudi Arabia, Quatar, and Yeman. 4

Capital punishment was reserved to noblemen or persons belonging to the upper class. This was perhaps due to a remainder of the customs in ancient Rome, where condemned criminals only were subjected to decapitation if they claimed to be a citizen of Rome. Otherwise they had to endure crucifixion or other more painful ways to be executed. The prisoner is usually blindfolded so that they do not see the sword or axe coming and move at the crucial moment.It was not unusual for an assistant to hold the prisoners hair to prevent them from moving. In any event the results are gory to the extreme, as bloodspurts from severed arteries and viens of the neck including the aorta and the jugular vien. No doubt these two factors have lead to it's abandonment by most countries. It is probable that when a single blow is sufficient to decapitate the prisoner, they become unconscious within a few seconds. They die from shock and anoxia due to hemorrage and loss of blood pressure within less than 60 seconds. However because of muscles, and vertibrae in the neck are tough, decapitation might require more than one blow. It has often been reported theat the eyes and mouths of people beheaded have shown signs of movement. It has been calculated that the human brain has enough oxygen stored for metabolism to persist about seven seconds after the supply is cut off. These executions were mostly public and always attracted a large crowd, who had a very critical eye upon the abilities of the executioner. If the decapitation was not done properly, it could happen for the unfortunate executioner to be lynched by an angry mob. Now in the 21st century, beheading is still used as a means of punishment in Saudi Arabia for crimes such as; murder, rape, drug trafficking, sodomy, armed robbery, apostasy and many other so called crimes, with 2007 being a record high for executions with 153 men and 3 women being executed. In 2009 was 67 people executed which included 2 women.

I do not agree with these forms of punishment because the understanding of punishment is to serve several purposes: retribution, rehabilitation and deterrence. The penalties outlined above do not achieve the purposes for which sentences were developed. It does nothing more than serve as retribution for society and deter the offender to commit further crimes. The question is if it is more important to cure the ills of society through retribution or should we reform the offender in the hopes of producing a more productive individual? My opinion is that we need to educate us and to educate our children in the hopes of deterring criminal action. We, as a society, should also work to educate individuals that are already incarcerated. In this way, upon their release, they may be better able to react to situations that may place them back in a penal facility or on death row. Sentences must make them understand that committing crimes is not a solution because there are other ways in which they can live their life with family and friends in a good relationship with the authorities. These extreme forms of punishments that were presented are final and leave no way to correct mistakes made by criminals and to reintegrate them into society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: www.google.com ro.wikipedia.org www.nationalgeographic.com

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www. brainz.org